BIRDS AND POETS. 
151 
We might gaze back tranquil love for love into her dark 
eyes of sleeping waters when they showed eloquent for us 
the sparkling visions of her infinite life. In pleasant won- 
der, and some awe, we might look down where the cavern- 
ous arteries of her warm great heart were yawning — hear 
the clinking ripple of her nourishing blood go through her 
veins — while, far beneath, her fiery bowels yearned and 
shook the hills with belchings. 
Then in her long rivers we would see the arms of a nurs- 
ing Mother thrown around the nations — we should know in 
the wind-bowed voiceful forest, the shaking of her musical 
hair — and ah ! how tenderly salute the Wild Flower " cinque- 
spotted with its crimson drops," sent forth to us from near 
her heart — a thought of odors painted and embodied by the 
Sun. 
We should then see in Brute active life ; not simply sav- 
age foes with whom our dealings should be under the law 
of blood, but Anti-types in which were foreshadowed the 
physical thoughts of strength, activity, courage, &c., which 
were to be united in man the Type. Lion, tiger, horse, hog, 
monkey, all blended into one ; and he — with his union of 
the Higher Vitality acting through these forces — exhibiting 
their utmost capabilities, the basest as well as the best powers 
of these organized thoughts of action and of passion. 
Then would they become to us forever a lower Brother- 
hood, reminding us that we too are born " of the earth, 
earthy that, with all the keen exulting of this star measur- 
ing vision, we are linked to them through a common life in 
half that constitutes our being. 
Then would the Brute King of Numidian forests be a re- 
proach to us — with its inviolate faith to the original laws 
which stamped it royal — would rebake its Human Brother 
of the lion-heart back to " mere nature ;" when he grew vo- 
luptuous, would taunt him through the fixed wrinkles in its 
tawny face and the still strength of fierceness in its eye, to 
